


Survived by

by orphan_account



Category: Homeland
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-10 09:56:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 5,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How do you move on from a life you're not even sure you wanted?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Trying out second-person. Basically: what happened in those four months after Carrie returned from Tehran, and what happens after that?

You walk back into your apartment, drop your bags, and ascend those stairs, noiselessly, slowly, like you’re going to the gallows, like that time you swallowed a week’s worth of pills and then went to the bed you made to die in. 

You’ve had to pee since your connecting flight in Geneva. Your stomach is cramping so badly, and your throat is dry and hoarse. Not that you’d know. You haven’t spoken to anyone since Geneva either.

You don’t even recognize yourself in the mirror. Your eyes are bloodshot and swollen, your hair pulled into a bun. You look thinner than usual—sickly. Your face is splotchy and white. You look like someone who’s just watched the man she loves—loved?—hanged. 

You climb into bed, which feels nice, and you let the softness envelop you. It’s the middle of the afternoon, but you’re still on Tehran time. You clutch the side of your stomach, which still hurts, and you feel a tiny kick—some sign of life—and wish like never before that you were dead.


	2. Chapter 2

You don’t know why, but when you wake the next morning, sunlight streaming through the windows, you believe someone will be there. Someone will have let themselves in and stayed the night and maybe just waited for you to wake so you’d have someone to talk to. Someone would be worried and concerned about your well-being.

No one is there. 

You walk downstairs, into the living room where his face is still plastered on your walls, taunting you with your failure. You can’t even remember the last time he wasn’t staring back at you. From the monitors or photographs, or right there in front of you, made manifest, like you’d conjured him and made him fall in love with you. 

The sight of him sends a shiver down your spine and a deep and sharp pang into your gut. 

So you walk back upstairs and into your room, and you close the curtains and shut all the doors, and maybe no one will ever come. Ever.


	3. Chapter 3

Someone comes the next day. 

There is a sharp knock on the door that wakes you—you feel more tired than you were before you ever slept, imagine that—and you remember waking from that deep sleep so many many months ago, Saul at the door waiting, remnants of your surrender still scattered over the counter, and then the world putting itself back together and his face and it was like a message sent from God (if you believed in God), to keep going. 

You peek through the door and Peter Quinn is standing on the other side, hands stuffed into his pockets. 

A familiar face, but not someone you want to see. 

“What do you want?” you say as you open the door, just a crack. 

“Carrie. Can I come in?” he answers. He sounds concerned. You wish he wouldn’t be. 

“I don’t want to see anyone right now.” 

“It’s important,” he says and he grasps the edge of the door and actually forces himself through the doorway, which takes you so much by surprise you just stand there looking dumbly at him. 

“When was the last time you slept? You look like hell,” he says, looking you up and down. “No offense,” he adds. 

“For your information I’ve slept the past two days.” 

“Why aren’t you wearing pajamas?”

You look down at yourself. You’re still wearing the grey slacks and black silk blouse you had on the whole time, for everything. 

“Have you eaten anything?” 

“I’m not hungry.”

“I’m making you some food. Why don’t you go take a shower, and I’ll make you some food.”

“Quinn, you don’t have to.” 

“Yes. I do,” he answers quietly. He walks into your kitchen and opens the refrigerator. “I’m sure I can find something in here that’s half edible.” 

You keep your distance. He’s being too friendly and too casual and too normal, but now that you’ve realized you’re still wearing these clothes the only thing in the world you want is to remove them from your body. 

You turn and head upstairs and you can hear him smelling things suspiciously, followed by the confused opening and shutting of several cabinets and doors.

He will never know about the bath you drew, the bathtub full of water you waded your fingers through and stared at, before draining.


	4. Chapter 4

He is tearing off paper towels and folding them into triangles when you walk back downstairs in clean clothes. 

“I hope you like tuna. Well, I assume you do, it was in your cupboards. About the only thing in your home that wasn’t past its expiration date,” he tells you. 

He has made tuna sandwiches and cut them into triangles. He left the crusts on, mercifully. You already feel helpless. 

“And the bread?” you wonder. 

“Freezer.” 

You don’t even feel your eyebrows raise, but he nods. “I know, I was surprised, too,” he says. 

You approach him slowly, which is strange, because shouldn’t it be the other way around? He is way too jovial right now, you think. Doesn’t he know what’s happened? Why is he being so friendly? 

He digs right into his sandwich and you sit there, take a small bite, and chew and chew and chew to make it seem like you’re eating more than you really are. 

“I’m sure you’ve had visitors,” he tells you in between bites.

“No,” you say. 

He looks up and puts down his sandwich. “Not Saul?”

You shake your head.

“Or your sister? Your dad?”

“No.” 

He opens his mouth as if to speak and you wonder if he’s thinking of the other people who would visit you but is totally at a loss. 

“I don’t blame them, though.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I don’t want to see anybody right now. I only let you in because I knew you wouldn’t take no for an answer.” 

“I’m worried about you.” 

You have no response for this. You are worried about you, too. 

He slides his plate to his side and puts his hands on the table, begins fiddling with his fingers. 

“Look. Carrie.” You can’t help staring at his fingers. They are nimble but sturdy. One is crooked and you want to ask if he broke it as a kid. “I’m so sorry about everything that happened. I… well I don’t know how you feel. But I know loss. I do know loss. I guess I just want you to know that I’m here for you… if you need anything.”

You offer him a slight smile, but the truth is that you feel so tired and now nauseous from eating.

“Quinn, I—”

“How ‘bout I make you some tea? Go lie down, I’ll bring it to you.”

Another half-smile and you slowly rise—God, it even hurts to move—and head into the living room, past his taunting face, and collapse onto the couch. 

You are not sure what happened next, but when you wake later there’s a mug of cold tea by your side and a blanket sprawled over your body and the room is dark and empty once again.


	5. Chapter 5

You receive more calls over the next few days and you wonder whether Quinn was sent in as the original buffer to gauge how nearly suicidal you were. 

Lockhart calls and tells you to take the following week off, too. Then Saul, now unemployed, who wants to come by and bring you chicken soup and probably commiserate with you over how much of an asshole Lockhart is, but he did just give you two weeks off work. Everyone wants to come and bring you food—Virgil and his fucking spaghetti, Max. 

Maggie comes over with Dad just a few hours after Saul calls and you feel horrible for having to withhold details and redact everything. All you can say is that you lost an “important asset.” She asks you whether you’re still taking your meds and you lie, which makes you feel even guiltier. 

Dad stands off in the corner, arms crossed, silent but judging. You can’t tell whether he’s disappointed in you for not rousing up in the face of a shitty work trip—maybe he just can’t grasp the situation—or whether he’s sympathetic and sensing that something more is afoot. 

The glances you exchange are loaded, charged. You get them out of there as quickly as possible and return to bed.

You sleep so much but still feel so tired, and you wonder whether this is just how it’s going to be from now, fighting a lethargy that you can never quite overcome. Or maybe this is a symptom of pregnancy that no one ever told you about. 

Oh yes, you worry too much about that, too. 

Every kick haunts you, because it’s him—it’s his child, his very flesh and blood, a part of his own once-beating heart, and now he’s gone and he’s never coming back. And because it’s him—because it’s his—you can’t ever imagine letting go and that scares you even more.


	6. Chapter 6

You decide to tell Maggie you’re pregnant two days later, because your OB called and asked you to schedule your 18-week appointment and you can’t bear to go alone. You do your best to clean yourself up. You shower. You put on makeup—minimal but effective by your estimation. You tell her to come over for tea and when she lets herself in you’ve already put the kettle on and this is the most together you’ve felt in ages. 

“Hi. I just put the kettle on. What kind of tea do you want?” you ask her. You feel yourself smile and the sensation is so foreign to you—when was the last time you smiled, you wonder. 

“Whatever you’re having is fine with me,” she says. She walks past you into the living room and you can hear the shuffling of papers, no doubt her busily rifling through whatever magazines you have out, whatever briefs you’ve scattered across your desk. It doesn’t even bother you, you’re so nervous about telling her. 

Eventually silence falls and when you walk into the living room to hand her the mug, she’s poring over a volume of the _Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine_. 

“Here you go,” you say, passing her the mug. 

“Since when do you drink tea?” she asks. 

“Since now, I guess.” 

She narrows her eyes at you, like she’s trying to tell how much you’re lying and all of a sudden the words you’ve wanted to say completely leave your mind. You take a deep breath. 

“Um, Maggie, there’s a reason I asked you over today,” you say. 

“That’s what I figured,” she says, shifting on the couch. She takes a sip of tea. 

“I’m pregnant,” you say finally, more bluntly than you had planned, your voice cracking. You remember what it was like telling him, like this final consolation, a white flag waving overhead. This is why, this is why I did it. This is how much I love you. This is how much I’m scared and how much I’m not scared. This is what I’ve wanted to tell you for as long as I can remember but what I never could. You remember his face dropping—disappointment, or fear, too? You remember how he did not seem happy and how that seemed to puncture a hole into your heart. You remember feeling so cold and you even remember feeling the baby kick right then—on his voice or maybe yours? And you remember then—now that the truth was finally out—feeling even a sliver of hope amid the anxiety. 

You remember almost that same conversation so many months ago at the lake, when he talked about becoming a teacher, and you think how good he must be with kids, how passionately he seems to love them. And despite yourself, and despite even what you want and wish for, you picture him coaching a soccer team, or helping with homework, or making dinner for the family (family?) when you’re running home late from work. And you picture family— _family_ —vacations and all these things you never even knew you wanted (maybe you really don’t want them) or never even thought possible. What had you said? We might make it. Or, we could be happy. 

Maggie’s enduring silence draws you back into the present. When she finally speaks, she asks how far along you are. 

“Seventeen weeks,” you say. 

“Wow.” 

“I know.” 

“Are you taking your meds?” 

“No.” 

“You know it’s okay to take Lithium when you’re pregnant, though?”

“I hate the Lithium. I hate being on it. It makes my head feel fuzzy, and I feel fine off it. Really.” You let out a small laugh, still foreign to you. 

“What about prenatal vitamins?” Your silence is answer enough. She begins asking about your sleep regimen, how much you’re eating and how often, how nauseous you feel, questions upon questions and you do your best to answer them. 

Not once does she ask who the father is, or why you’re just now telling her, and you can’t decide whether to be annoyed at her for this or grateful. 

“I’m assuming you haven’t told anyone at work yet?” she asks, too.

“Not yet. I can’t deal with that right now.” 

“Well, you have time. You’re not even showing yet,” she says, eyeing your stomach. 

“I’m supposed to go in for my 18-week appointment next week. Would you come with me?”

“Sure,” she says, smiling, reaching out and rubbing your arm. You don’t know how but all of a sudden you’re crying.

“It’s okay,” she says, noting your tears. “It’s gonna be okay, Carrie.” You feel so embarrassed, so terrified. You thought telling her would make it feel less overwhelming but now it’s real—you can’t take it back—and you feel like you’re slowly shrinking, crushed under the weight of this reality. 

You nod and try to control your tears, to no effect. She brushes your hair out of your face and you think about how easily she assumes the role of mother and you of child and wonder how you could ever be like her. 

She turns then to look at the wall ahead, at his face and the map and strings every which way, like a constellation you’ll never be able to find again. 

“I’m assuming the father is… out of the picture,” she says slowly, carefully, measuring her words. 

So she does know. All you can say is “yes.” You don’t wish to say more, maybe you don’t even need to say more, but you feel somehow that it’s expected of you. Perhaps this small act of defiance is all you have left, though. 

Mercifully she doesn’t press further, though you guess she doesn’t really need to. She stays a half hour more and tells you about Josie and Ruby and school plays and tennis tournaments. You listen quietly. It’s nice to sit and be silent and have someone next to you and feel this kind of connection without having to do much of anything.


	7. Chapter 7

You don’t attempt much human contact for the next few days. You are so exhausted, your muscles ache, you can’t walk around for more than a few minutes before you get dizzy and the room blurs. 

You are so acutely miserable, worse than any kind of depression or mood swing you’ve ever experienced. The light hurts your eyes. You walk around the apartment like a zombie, your eyes red and weary, even though you’re sleeping almost all hours of the day. You can’t seem to climb out of this hole. How badly you wish for the Lithium right then—for the clozapine or any fucking drug to bring you up. How badly you wish for a cigarette, for a drink. 

Your mind wanders to the time you did cocaine in college, before that first manic flight. Some boy—his name now obviously escapes you—had handed you the rolled up dollar bill and even arranged the line for you. Something wild and feral in his eyes, and you’re sure there was something like it in yours, too, because you snorted the line, the whole world came into focus, all yours senses sharpened. He went down on you and made you crazy, held your restless arms down on the mattress, and that only made you wilder. Then he fucked you and gave you the best orgasm of your life (well, until then). That combination of coke, coursing all through your veins, and the smell of sex, the feeling of him hard inside you. You nipped his ear and he flinched, then thrust into you harder and you both came together, a perfect synergy of lust—chemical, natural—and passion. When you woke the next morning, stark naked, you remembered little else except that still moment, as your limbs went warm and your whole body numb—or maybe more feeling than ever, what was the difference?—and you wondered whether it was the orgasm or the coke or the combination, and you never found out. 

Because you never did coke again, and you never fucked that boy—now nameless—again. 

You think if you weren’t pregnant and depressive and a grown adult and if you remembered his name you would call him up right now, and find some coke, and binge on it, do a thousand dollars’ worth (how much would that buy?) in one night and fuck him over and over until your body stung in all the right places.


	8. Chapter 8

You decide to let go of any self-control you think you possessed. You tear through your bathroom searching for one—just one—pill, rifling through every bottle and bag in there, but nothing. You check every pocket of every bag and item of clothing you own. You search in every kitchen cabinet, in your wallet—even though you’ve never put pills in there, in the freezer (again, you don’t know why). You are actually a heap of exhaustion and tears, splayed out on the kitchen floor, when the type of idea that you sometimes get when manic—brilliant, wild, totally preposterous—hits you. You jump up, seeming to miraculously recover a spryness you’ve been missing for weeks, and leap into the living room, in front of the bulletin board where his image still stares back at you. You look at the dot that’s Tehran and then tear at the map. It rips, makes a satisfying noise. 

There are about 50 squares of cork on this wall and you don’t know where you put the pills, and you smile that mischievous grin that usually stretches across your face when you think of something like that. 

It takes you only ten minutes to find them, in a little plastic bag, taped to the back of the fifth square you take off the wall. There are seven in there. You pause, wondering how many you should take. Maybe you’ll space them out over the next week. You think about your 18-week appointment and wonder whether they’ll do blood work. Maybe it’s best to take them as quickly as possible. 

You swallow one dry, turn around to the stack of CDs against the wall and find _Straight, No Chaser_ (another mischievous smile crosses your face) and listen to the piano and it’s probably all in your head but you feel like you’re floating already.


	9. Chapter 9

Jack Young works at the FBI doing some kind of analysis work—at least that’s what he told you. He thinks you work at the State Department doing something with accounting or finance. At this point you forgot what you told him originally, and you guess he has, too. You often wonder—often, because you’ve known him for years—whether he really is in the FBI, which would probably make him even more attractive to you, because CIA and FBI don’t fuck. The taboo of it would arouse you. 

You met at a bar in Georgetown what feels like a million years ago but was really only five on a short trip home from Iraq during your second tour. He is tall, tanned, and handsome, exhibiting an all-American aura that would have fit right into a J. Crew catalogue. He smelled like really nice cologne and he was almost too nice for you until he pounded five shots of tequila with orange instead of lime, which struck you as strange and therefore alluring. 

Turns out he was tremendous in bed—the best sex you’ve ever had on a pure and technical level, you think—and had no problem with having no-strings-attached sex whenever you were in town. 

You haven’t seen him in almost two years, since before Brody. Maybe he doesn’t even live in D.C. anymore. Maybe he’s married and has a kid. Maybe this is a bad idea, but that never stopped you before.


	10. Chapter 10

Five flirtatious texts and an hour and a half later, you are dressed semi-casually and still riding that single clozapine. The doorbell rings amid Monk’s still-swarming piano. You seem to float to the door, where he’s standing on the other side, a bottle of tequila in hand. 

“Hey there,” you say, almost drunkenly. Your tolerance for clozapine has completely evaporated. 

“Long time no see,” he drawls. You forgot he had a Southern accent. 

“Come in.” He walks in slowly, taking in your apartment, which is empty and bare and probably depressing. He has never been here before. It’s the rare occasion you take a man home with you. 

“You’re taller than I remember,” you tell him, and he smiles. 

“You’re less blonde,” he says, and you smile sheepishly. “I like it.”

You smile and then step toward him, placing a single hand delicately on his cheek and reaching up on your toes to graze his lips. You kiss him softly and remove the bottle from his hand and place it on the table behind you. 

“I want you,” you say to him, beginning to unbutton his shirt. He runs his hands up your arms and cups you between your legs, which makes you gasp. Your entire body tingles. “Fuck,” you breath. 

He kisses you roughly then, and begins to run his fingers through your hair. “Upstairs,” you whisper into his ear. 

“Yes ma’am,” he says, which would usually prompt a “fuck you,” but he wraps your legs around his waist and you don’t even care because the clozapine and you’re wet and he smells so good and you feel like you’re 28 and fearless and so unscathed. 

He has no problem carrying you up the stairs and places you on the bed, hovering above you, his shirt half open, and you run your hands up his abdomen and around his back. You grab at his belt buckle and reach under his boxers and grab him firmly. He groans and you stroke him lightly and it looks like his eyes have rolled back in his head, which sets you off. 

He fucks you hard and makes you come five times, which seems excessive (and is), but he never protests, and by the end you are exhausted and sweaty and the clozapine has worn off. By the sheer grace of God he doesn’t notice the bump in your abdomen and as quick as you can you put on his shirt, which is overlarge on you. He grabs you by the waist when you climb out of bed for a glass of water. 

“That was amazing,” he says, rolling the collar of his shirt off your shoulder and kissing your collarbone. 

You’re not sure how you feel about him staying the night. Suddenly this seems like the worst idea you’ve ever had, which says more than you wish it did. 

“As good as you remember?” you say in spite of yourself, unsure why you’re still flirting with him. There’s nothing left to get or prove. 

“Better, sweetheart,” he drones. 

“Do you want anything from the kitchen? I don’t have anything, so don’t say yes.” 

“Bring up that tequila I brought.” 

You walk out silently and grab the bottle of tequila. You swallow another clozapine, too, against your much better judgment, but you figure why stop now. 

The buzzing returns to your brain only a few minutes later. He takes a swig of liquor from the bottle and doesn’t notice that you never take a sip when he passes it back to you countless times later, only letting it touch your lips. He gets kind of goofy and stupid the more he drinks, and you’re grateful you’re not sober for any of this. 

He tells you about his work at the FBI, but he’s too skilled to let any real details slip. He asks if you’ve seen anyone in the almost two years since you last saw each other. 

“One guy,” you say before you can even think about it. Your head is still spinning and your thoughts bleed one into the next, never settling for too long. Your lips are numb. 

“Oh yeah? Where’s he?” 

“Didn’t work out.”

“Why’s that?”

“It just… wasn’t meant to be,” you say finally. 

“His loss,” he says, and now you remember that his kindness really annoys you.

“What about you?” you ask, before he can press further. 

“You know me, I don’t like to be tied down.” You can’t help but roll your eyes. He is kind when he wants to be. 

“Shocker.” 

He looks at you dreamily. His eyes are bloodshot and his lips look plumper than before. He turns over on his side and strokes his fingers through your hair. You turn to look at him and he kisses you, then unbuttons your shirt with one hand, sliding his hand around your chest and beginning to massage your breasts. 

“You like to be tied down?” he asks, and you realize he’s holding both your wrists by your side. 

“Yes,” you whisper.


	11. Chapter 11

You wake the next morning, your head pounding, the bed empty. Which is why you like him. He’s not one to linger or take anything to mean more than it should. You think he would be the perfect guy to settle down with, which defeats his exact purpose in your life: to make you orgasm, to make you feel good, to call you sweetheart, and to only come around when you feel like it. 

You turn over and there’s a note where his body was. 

_Don’t wait two more years to call me up the next time._

A sudden pang of nerves hits your gut when you realize what your life will be like in two years. You have never been one to make plans—the very idea of it terrifies you, despite recent behavior—but you can’t ignore that in two years your entire life will be very different and not just in the way that your life was very different two years ago. Different that you can account and plan for and anticipate. 

That does terrify you. 

Not just the planning of it, but the very concept. Some person, completely reliant and dependent on you and you alone. You wonder if last night was the last time you’ll have sex in… years. That makes you want to cry, selfish as the thought may be. 

Then you do something that’s totally impulsive, as impulsive really as the train of thought that led to it. You rise quickly from bed, run down the stairs, and pour those last five pills down the drain. For good measure you switch the garbage disposal on, and let the sound of gears twisting and grinding fill your ears.


	12. Chapter 12

There was nothing particularly special about the morning you woke up feeling nauseous—other than the fact that you woke up feeling nauseous. The middle of January, the most monotonous time of year, now even worse, because you spent most hours of your day surrounded by the still-present smell of burned flesh and ash. It would take a while before that smell went away. 

There wasn’t anything particularly special about that day, no, not until the test read positive and all of a sudden you missed him more than your body could take. Doubling over in pain—where does it hurt? _everywhere_ —you curled up in a ball next to your bed, too weak to even climb into it, and prayed to some God you didn’t believe in to intervene in one of two ways. 

_Dear God, please take this baby away from me._

_Dear God, please bring him back to me._

Maybe God is testing you now. Maybe He knows better than you. Maybe He has plans. Maybe that baby is the only way he can come back to you. 

You realize this over the next few weeks, when even the complete denial of your situation leads to nothing, though you’re not entirely sure you want it to lead to anything (and therefore not entirely sure you _don’t_ want it to lead to anything). 

And now Maggie is gently squeezing your hand, running her thumb over your finger and making polite conversation with the ultrasound technician and all you can think about is all those times you prayed to a God you didn’t believe in and asked Him for things you weren’t sure you wanted, and everyone will think those tears rolling down your cheek are from hearing you are going to have a beautiful baby girl.


	13. Chapter 13

You return back to work the following week. Lockhart meets with you first thing. He is very nice and cordial, and you think he actually looks scared shitless. Scared to say anything that could be construed as angry or impolite. Scared that he has no idea what he’s doing. He’s already rearranged his office, brought in new furniture. You miss the inviting comfort of Saul’s dark wooden desk, the armchair by the window. 

“I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but I do hope we can both put that behind us. I think you’re a valuable agency asset,” he begins. 

You remember the way he pointed his finger at you in that endless hearing, accusing you of harming your country, like a dagger into your heart. 

“I hope so, too,” you say, putting on your best smile. He hasn’t known you long enough to recognize its insincerity. 

“I know things in Tehran… well, they didn’t go exactly as planned.” That’s one way to put it, you think. “But everyone here… it’s a huge victory for the agency. I want you to know you were instrumental in the operation’s success.” 

“Thank you, sir.” 

“Anyway, in regard to your role now. Being as you were involved in the initial recruitment of Javadi, I want you to continue running him. No one left at the agency has the same case officer experience as you, and especially with an asset as high profile,” he says. Which sounds like a compliment, but really isn’t. 

“I’m grateful for the opportunity.” You can hardly believe the words coming out of your mouth. This is the man, who—if Saul is to be believed—sold you and Brody down the river, the man who handed him over. Standing behind Javadi with the noose in his hands.

You wonder how Brody would feel about you making nice with him, or at least pretending to. Isn’t this a betrayal? 

Weirdly, it doesn’t feel like it, though you know it should. You know you should tell Lockhart to fuck right off, join Saul in the private sector, leave all the bullshit behind. But then you find yourself standing up, find yourself shaking his hand (it’s firm, but sweaty), find yourself walking out of his office and into the elevator, and you hate yourself. 

The same way you hated yourself listening to the news of Bill Walden’s death, the same way you hated yourself reading about Dana Brody’s suicide attempt, the way you hated yourself when you put those headphones back on and kept watching. The way you hated him sitting in that yellowed safe house, so close to him but feeling like an entire desert was between you. When he told you he felt like a monster and you were calling him a hero. The way you hated him then, is how you hate yourself now.


	14. Chapter 14

Saul comes over a few days later with chicken soup. You’re not sure why he brings it and when he catches you eyeing the containers funny he remarks, “Cures everything, I tell you.” You wonder if you still look like that much of a mess, but this man has seen you at your best and your worst and even though there’s so much distance there now—so much left unsaid, and so much that just can’t ever be said—it feels comforting to have him sitting there next to you. 

On this couch. Where he put your life back together and picked up so many pieces and understood everything you ever told him. This couch where he watched those monitors with you. 

So you don’t say much. You don’t need to, you realize, when the silence doesn’t unsettle you. 

“How are you?” he asks finally. 

You turn to look at him. You haven’t touched your soup. The smell is making you nauseous but you hope he doesn’t notice. 

“I’m fine. Tired.” 

“I know that feeling. We all need a vacation.” 

“And you?”

“Eh,” he wavers, holding his hands up in earnest. 

“Weighing your options?” 

“Something like that.” 

“Saul, I tried, with Lockhart, he’s just—” you start, which is a lie, but he stops you anyway. 

“I wouldn’t want to work under him anyway.”

You narrow your eyes at him momentarily—whatever that means. He passes over the comment like it’s nothing, and he suddenly feels further away than he’s ever been. 

You know he always hated Brody, that he despised the thought of you loving him. It probably made him sick, that the same heart that could love him could love some broken shell. He always wanted to see the world in black and white, though. Us versus them. 

Now you stare at him, eating his chicken soup quietly, and wonder when his eyes got so sad, so heavy, so weary. Or maybe you’re just fooling yourself into thinking they were ever different. 

Maybe he’s thinking the same thing about you.


End file.
